Resolutions
West Coast Conference of the New Civil Rights Movement
March 5-7, 2004, UC Berkeley
Perspective for the Next Phase of the Movement
Build the new united civil rights movement to defeat the rightwing attacks on minorities and on immigrants
Perspective for the next phase of the struggle
The new civil rights movement that BAMN has built in defense of affirmative action has shown the way to defeat the rightwing attack on civil rights and on immigrants. The young activist civil rights leaders must use this conference to clarify ourselves politically and strategically and to prepare for a large-scale development of integrated anti-racist struggle for equality in California, on the West Coast and throughout the country.
We have to learn from our victory at the US Supreme Court in defense of affirmative action. It is mass, militant, integrated struggle that can beat the rightwing, just as the 50,000-person civil rights march organized by BAMN at the US Supreme Court secured the upholding of affirmative action in the University of Michigan cases. The whole series of attacks on affirmative action, integration programs and on immigrant rights has been originated by the same set of rightwing, racist forces in the Republican Party. It is a matter of practical strategy and logical consistency to interweave the different elements of our struggle against racism and for equality. The rightwing forces responsible for these attacks comprehend the interconnection of the attacks on affirmative action, integration and on immigrants' rights. We must as well.
BAMN has been the leading civil rights organization defending affirmative action and integration in America. The fight against racism and for equality in America requires BAMN now to become the leading civil rights organization fighting for full rights and dignity for immigrants. The rightwing attacks on civil rights and on immigrants are the leading edge of racism in America. The rightwing is now focusing a renewed attack on immigrants. To be effective in defeating these divisive, mean-spirited and bigoted attacks, our new militant independent, youth-led civil rights movement must link these fights together in a seamless, integrated whole. In doing so, we must unite black, Latino/Chicano, Native American, Asian Pacific, Arab, other minority and anti-racist white people of all ages, documented and undocumented in a generalized struggle against racism and for equality.
Building the new civil rights movement to defeat the rightwing attack on civil rights and on immigrants means a new layer of young leaders of all races and backgrounds coming forward. It means building BAMN as the one organization that has maintained its independence from the establishment political parties and has acted on the perspective of building a united, mass, integrated, militant, youth-led civil rights movement.
If we can deliver this rightwing a few more big tactical defeats, we will begin to turn the tide on the whole set of attacks on the gains we have made toward equality and integration in American society. We can usher in a new period of progress toward Martin Luther King's Dream of a society of sister- and brotherhood, of justice, integration and equality.
Over the coming months we must defeat the new anti-immigrant Proposition 187 with mass actions and a mass public campaign. We must energize the fight to remove Ward Connerly from the University of California Regents as the leading opponent of affirmative action in the country. Along with the boycott of Coors beer - a major funder of the attack on civil rights - these campaigns will help defeat the attack on affirmative action. Since the US Supreme Court victory, the attack on affirmative action has moved to Michigan, where the new civil rights movement is fighting a Proposition 209-style initiative. The West Coast civil rights movement must defend the Berkeley Unified School Districts desegregation program, the first voluntary K-12 desegregation plan in the country, from a rightwing legal and political attack.
At the same time, we must build the May 15, 2004 National Civil Rights March to Realize the Promise of Brown v. Board of Education and Defend Affirmative Action. This march marking the 50-year anniversary of Brown, must both declare the birth of a new phase of struggle for the aspiration to equality and integration in education that Brown has stood for and it must express the culmination of the very successful last phase of struggle to defeat the rightwing attacks on minorities.
Join us in building this new movement.
Adopted March 5, 2004 by unanimous vote (145 for, 0 against, 0 abstaining)
Resolution to Add Immigrant Rights into BAMN's Name
Adding the phrase immigrant rights to our name is the appropriate way to express what the new civil rights movement must do and become over the next period in the way of defeating the racist rightwing attacks on minorities and on immigrants. The new name would be Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary.
Resolution Opposing Any Ban on Lesbian/Gay Marriage
At this moment the rightwing is focusing an attack on the possibility of stopping gains for lesbian/gay rights. The rightwing currently attempting to ban lesbian/gay marriage is the same prejudiced forces that have been attacking immigrants and minorities over the last period. In order to defeat the rightwing, BAMN aims to unite all those facing the array of rightwing attacks.
Just as anti-miscegenation laws (laws against people of different races marrying) have fallen, the attempt to outlaw lesbian/gay marriage will also be defeated.
Deliberately echoing Brown v. Board of Education the Massachusetts Supreme Court found against an attempt to prohibit lesbian/gay couples from marrying in the words, "The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal." This fundamental truth has been one of the basic points of departure for BAMN's struggle for equality.
BAMN declares our opposition to any attempt to pass a constitutional amendment banning lesbian/gay marriage.
BAMN calls on all progressive and lesbian/gay organizations and individuals to join our May 15, 2004 March on Washington to Realize the Promise of Brown v. Board of Education and declare with the new, integrated, militant civil rights movement: Separate but equal is a lie.
Resolution Opposing the Ban on Muslim Headscarves in French Public Schools
BAMN recognizes that the fight against racism is an international fight. The victories and defeats for civil rights in one country inevitably have an impact on other countries in an interdependent world.
One of the most sever racist attacks by a government in the world today is taking place in France, where, in February, the lower house in parliament adopted a ban on women's headscarves along with other clothing with religious significance (including turbans, yarmulkes, etc.) in public schools. All of the political discussion has been about Muslim headscarves, making clear that young Muslim women are the real target of this legislation.
In recent French politics, the fascist National Front made this attack a centerpiece of its program. Now the mainstream parties in a misguided attempt to steal the thunder of the French fascists, have taken up this attack and are in the process of making it law. In effect in an attempt to take away some of the fascist base, the mainstream political parties have given the fascists a major political and legal victory, emboldening the fascists by treating them as a driving force in French politics.
Some French feminists and leftists have attempted to defend the racist law by arguing that it is a measure directed against the oppression of women symbolized by the tradition of the wearing of the veil. This is utterly misrepresents the nature of this law.
This measure would force young Muslim women in France into the odious choice of facing the penalties of defying the law (being excluded from school) or removing their headscarf only because they are forced to do so by a law which they regard as extremely discriminatory and racist. This completely deforms the struggle against sexism of young Muslim women in their own communities and families.
In reality the most important way young Muslim women will take up the issues of sexism in their own lives in the next period will be in the course of their development as political leaders of a new youth-led mass movement against all forms of racism in French society.
Despite the fact that this law has been passed with the support of all the major parties in the French parliament, and the fact that this law has the support of the majority of the white people of France, it is still possible to defeat this law and the racist attack that it represents.
BAMN urges all antiracists and all progressive people in France to join in building a mass movement of active solidarity with young Muslim women and other French students who are the targets of this discriminatory law. All the genuinely progressive people of France should begin now planning how to make this racist law unenforceable, thereby humiliating the official political leaders of French society into repealing it.
When this law goes into effect next September, in each school where Muslim women are threatened with exclusion for wearing headscarves, other students should wear headscarves to school as an expression of support for the Muslim women and in order to make any exclusions from school unviable and unpopular.
Similar campaigns should also be carried out in solidarity with other students threatened with exclusion under the terms of this law for wearing turbans, yarmulkes, etc. Such a campaign carried out seriously and skillfully by a new activist antiracist movement in France can turn the current majority in support of the law into a mass reaction against it.
Building on the past struggles against racism and colonialism in French history, such an antiracist movement would expose the racism of the official political leaderships whose demagogy has mislead public opinion and persuade the French people to return to the defense of the great French traditions of liberty, equality and fraternity.
Resolution to Endorse the April 25, 2004 Women's Rights March on Washington
As an integrated civil rights organization that unites women and men, girls and boys, on the basis of the struggle against all forms of sexism and for full equality between the sexes, and as an organization of strong women leaders, BAMN endorses and will send a contingent to the "March for Women's Lives" on April 25, 2004 in Washington DC.
